ResCon1

Biden’s Act of Political Suicide Is No Surprise

Biden’s Act of Political Suicide Is No Surprise

By John R Guardiano on July 21, 2024

Biden has always been a weak-minded party man or apparatchik, who does what the party and its vocal special interests want or order him to do.

Democrats are hailing President Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race as an heroic act of statesmanship befitting a man who puts country over self.

“Joe Biden will go down in history as one of our greatest presidents. This last act of sacrifice for his country guarantees it,” tweeted Stanford University Professor Michael McFaul.

McFaul is an otherwise sober-minded Democrat who served as President Obama’s ambassador to Russia. McFaul got a lot right about Russia and Ukraine, but he’s wrong about Biden.

In truth, Biden’s decision to quit the race reflects the fact that he has never been his own man; he has always been a weak-minded party man or apparatchik, who does what the party and its vocal special interests want or order him to do.

This was true in the 1970s, when, National Review reports, Biden embraced segregationist Democratic Senators like “James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia, both of whom steadfastly opposed racial integration and federal civil-rights protections for African Americans.”

It was true in the 1980s, when Biden supported the Democrats’ nuclear freeze, which would have given the Soviet Union a decisive advantage in its cold war against the United States and Europe.

It was true in the 1990s, when Biden tried to “Bork” or torpedo the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Borking or torpedoing Thomas was demanded by the the legal and feminist left.

It was true in the aughts, when, like most Democrats, Biden opposed The Surge in Iraq.

It was true in the 2010’s when, as Vice President, Biden carried water for Democratic President Barack Obama: by advocating for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq.

Never mind the fact that Obama would later have to send U.S. troops back into Iraq to destroy ISIS or the Islamic State. The party’s “anti-war” demands had to be met and so Biden met them.

And it is true in this decade as president. Biden may have campaigned as a moderate, but he has governed as a leftist or “progressive,” in accordance with the demands of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the Squad. Thus Biden’s misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” is really a downpayment on the far left’s Green New Deal.

So it should come as no surprise that now, when confronted with Democratic Party demands that he withdraw from the presidential race because polls show he can’t win, Biden is doing as ordered.

Biden is doing as he has always done: acting in accordance with the demands of the party and the clamoring of its special interests. We should have expected nothing less. At 81 years old Biden was not about to act differently.

Biden can’t be his own man because he has never been his own man. He’s a wholly-owned tool of the Democratic Party and whatever special interests are guiding and directing the party.

Good riddance

Feature photo credit: Biden and Hollywood megastar/Democratic Party big-money fundraiser George Clooney, courtesy of Josh Telles/Getty, published in Deadline.

Louisiana’s Ten Commandments Law and the Politics of Winning and Losing

Louisiana’s Ten Commandments Law and the Politics of Winning and Losing

By John R Guardiano on June 23, 2024

The law shows that, in Donald Trump’s Republican Party, fighting too often has become an end in itself and not a means to an end, which is winning.

Eric Erickson is a serious and thoughtful conservative. So I was surprised to hear him voice strong criticism of a new Louisiana law mandating display of the Ten Commandments in every classroom in the state.

However, Erickson’s criticism is not with the sum and substance of the law. He says he supports displaying the Ten Commandments in the classroom, as well as making the Ten Commandments part of the required course of study.

Instead, Erickson’s beef is with what he views as the state’s losing way of going about this, or losing way of fighting this political battle.

Judicial Scrutiny. For starters, he says, the law almost certainly will be struck down by the Supreme Court. A 1980 Supreme Court case (Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39) has “an almost identical fact pattern,” Erickson notes.

If Louisiana Republicans really wanted to win this fight, they would have avoided launching a doomed frontal assault on Stone v. Graham. Instead, they would have passed a law specifically designed to avoid judicial scrutiny, which would have accomplished the same thing, Erickson argues.

In other words, Louisiana Republicans would have fought to win and not fought for fighting’s sake or fought to lose. How might they have achieved this?

Winning Legislation. Erickson says Louisiana legislators could have passed two simple and Constitutionally unassailable laws that would have allowed schools and teachers to display and teach the Ten Commandments.

First, pass a law that says no school district or school board can punish a teacher for posting the Ten Commandments in the classroom.

Second, pass a resolution that says local churches and synagogues are welcome and encouraged to provide copies of the Ten Commandments to any teacher who wants them.

These two simple laws or resolutions would have accomplished the same thing as a mandatory Ten Commandments display, but without running afoul of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, Erickson argues.

The display of gay pride flags in many public schools, he explains, provides a useful example of how conservatives ought to wage their fight to display and teach the Ten Commandments in the classroom.

The state, contrary to the silly claims of some, is not forcing teachers to put up Pride flags in classrooms. [Some teachers] are doing it on their own volition.

Christian teachers should respond by putting up the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, or useful proverbs as posters. The Kennedy case (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 597 U.S. 507 (2022)) would clearly allow the teachers to do it on their own.

Louisiana Policy Failure. Moreover, Erickson asserts, the weakness of Louisiana’s mandatory Ten Commandments display is underscored by the fact that the Republican Governor, Jeff Landry, vetoed tort reform, and the Republican state legislature provided scant and inadequate funding for Education Savings Accounts.

Yet tort reform and school choice via education savings accounts are two highly prized conservative policy reforms.

Erickson makes an important point that needs to be heard, especially today, in Donald Trump’s Republican Party.

Trump’s Failure. Trump is often praised for being “a fighter,” and for his willingness “to fight.” But what Trump’s acolytes and sycophants don’t seem to understand is that fighting is not an end in itself, but rather a means to an end, which is winning.

Unfortunately, Trump is a poor and inept fighter. He doesn’t fight well or smartly, or with an overarching strategic and tactical purpose.

Sure, Trump throws a lot of punches, but most of his punches don’t score or connect. And many of his punches boomerang and end up hurting himself and the Republican Party.

That’s why Trump lost the 2020 election, and that’s why Republicans seriously under-performed in the 2022 midterm elections.

It’s not that Trump and the Republicans had a bad record and an unpopular agenda in 2020 and 2022. To the contrary: they had a good record and a positive agenda: peace and prosperity, tax cuts, historically low unemployment, low inflation, a booming stock market, et al.

The problem was (and still remains): Trump does not know how to fight. He doesn’t know how to pick his fights and frame issues to his and the Republican Party’s political advantage.

Republican Policy Failure. Unfortunately, Trump’s propensity to lose politically and in the policy arena has spread throughout the Republican Party.

Louisiana’s failure to pass tort reform, fund school choice, and enact a winning Ten Commandments law are all prime examples of this propensity to fight for fighting’s sake without a commitment to win and prevail.

“We keep losing,” writes Erickson, “because our supposedly strategic thinkers make more from defeat because, after all, they fight!

“They’d rather own the libs than own the future. Losing is a feature, not a bug, for them. So, too, is blaming anyone who’d like to win instead of engaging in failure theater.”

Erickson is right. Politically speaking, there are not ten commandments; there is only one commandment, and that is to win. Unless and until conservative Republicans understand this, displaying and teaching the Ten Commandments in the public schools will forever be a distant dream.

Feature photo credit: A screen shot of conservative pundit Eric Erickson via Twitter and the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, Donald Trump, courtesy of Fox Business.

The Presidential Politics of Biden’s Aversion to Winning in Ukraine and Gaza

The Presidential Politics of Biden’s Aversion to Winning in Ukraine and Gaza

By John R Guardiano on June 16, 2024

George H. W. Bush lost the White House in 1992. Biden’s foreign policy failures are setting him up for a similar election day defeat.

At the 1992 Democratic National Convention, then-Georgia Governor Zell Miller derided President George H.W. Bush as a man who “talks like Dirty Harry but acts like Barney Fife.”

It was a cheap shot and an unfair characterization of President Bush, who had masterfully orchestrated the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union, the liberation of Eastern Europe, and the destruction of the Iraqi Army in Kuwait.

Nonetheless, this colorful charge had political resonance and it helped to sink Bush in the 1992 presidential election, which he lost to Bill Clinton.

But while the charge was unwarranted when leveled against Bush in 1992, it is justified when leveled against Joe Biden in 2024. Biden talks a good game, but lacks policy follow-through. He talks the talk, but doesn’t walk the walk.

Biden’s policy toward Ukraine and Israel are illustrative examples. Biden talks about the importance of “standing with Ukraine” and “supporting Israel.” He champions the transatlantic alliance.

While commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Normandy invasion, for instance, Biden warned:

Democracy is more at risk across the world than at any point since the end of the World War Two—since these beaches were stormed in 1944.

Now, we have to ask ourselves: Will we stand against tyranny, against evil, against crushing brutality of the iron fist?”

Will we stand for freedom? Will we defend democracy? Will we stand together?

Unfortunately, Biden’s actions don’t match his rhetoric. During World War II, what distinguished the transatlantic alliance was its commitment to winning the war and defeating the Axis powers.

Standing with our allies for freedom was a means to an end, not an end in itself. Yet for Biden, the means (standing with our allies) appears to be the end that he seeks, and winning is never mentioned or really pursued.

In short, Biden lacks the courage of his supposed (rhetorical) convictions. The policy result: self-deterrence and half-measures that undermine our allies, weaken our alliances, and embolden our enemies.

In Ukraine, for instance, Biden has steadfastly refused to allow Ukraine to use American long-range weapon systems, the Army Tactical Missile System (ATAMS), to strike Russian targets within Russia. This has given Russia a coveted sanctuary, or safe base of operations, from which they have repeatedly struck Ukraine civilian and military targets.

Recently, Biden finally and belatedly relented, somewhat. He has allowed Ukraine to strike a very limited number of Russian military sanctuaries within Russia. However, he did this only after the Ukrainian military risked being overrun and forced to cede significant territory, cities and population centers to Russia.

Even today, the Institute for the Study of War notes that Biden’s policy change “has reduced the size of Russia’s ground sanctuary by only 16 percent at maximum.” In other words, 84 percent of Russian sanctuaries remain off limits to the Ukrainian military.

Israel, too, has seen its hands tied by Biden, who has threatened to withhold military assistance if Israel pushes too far too fast in its effort to destroy Hamas. Biden has sought a diplomatic solution to the conflict that will appease both Israel and Hamas.

But as Matthew Continetti points out:

The war in Gaza won’t end with another ceasefire or food package or humanitarian pier. The war will end when Israel completes its task of destroying Hamas as a military force… America’s role in this task is to help our ally Israel by supplying military aid and assistance…

The problem with Biden’s aversion to winning in Ukraine and Gaza is that it is prolonging these horrific conflicts and giving America’s enemies, Russia and Hamas, reason to think they can win by outlasting us.

China and Iran, meanwhile, are watching and taking note. Does the United States lack the will to win? Will it tire of the fight? Is it a dependable ally? How committed is it, really, to the so-called rules based international order? Can it be forced to back down if bloodied?

Unfortunately, because of Biden’s weak and tepid foreign policy—because of his reluctance to articulate and implement a winning strategy in both Ukraine and Gaza—the answers to these questions are not reassuring. Deterrence is failing and Biden is courting further war and conflict as a result.

The president needs to take a page from his hero, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who committed himself to the “unconditional surrender” of Germany and Japan during World War II.

Only by winning in Ukraine and Gaza can Biden win reelection in 2024. Otherwise, like President Bush in 1992, he’s going down.

Feature photo credit: Presidents George H. W. Bush and Joe Biden, courtesy of the White House and PBS, respectively.

Who is Failing Ukraine: Biden or Congressional Republicans?

Who is Failing Ukraine: Biden or Congressional Republicans?

By John R Guardiano on January 8, 2024

The media blame Congressional Republicans for failing to support Ukraine; but the real failure of support lies in the Oval Office with Joe Biden.

The media and most foreign policy analysts would have you believe that farsighted Joe Biden supports Ukraine, while myopic Congressional Republicans don’t; and that a lack of GOP support is why Ukraine enters this, its third year of war, on the defensive, facing a Russian military onslaught.

In fact, the opposite is true. Joe Biden says he supports Ukraine; yet he has deliberately withheld from Ukraine critical weapon systems such as the ATACMS or long-range Army Tactical Missile System.

He has been seriously tardy and parsimonious about the weapon systems he has provided (e.g., a few dozen Abrams tanks and just 20 ATACMS), while imposing range and use restrictions on other provided weapon systems (e.g., the HIMARS or High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems).

As Biden himself publicly acknowledged Nov. 9, 2022: “There’s a lot of things [i.e., weapon systems] that Ukraine wants that we didn’t do” or provide.

Consequently, as Phillips P. O’Brien observes, “while Russia can strike anywhere in Ukraine, the U.S. has denied the Ukrainians the weapons they need to hit Russian targets, even in the parts of Ukraine that Russia occupies.”

Biden’s dithering and delay has been quite costly. It has given Russia the time and space that it needed to massively mine occupied Ukraine and to erect massive defensive fortifications, which the Ukrainians simply have not been able to overcome, especially given their lack of Western and American aircraft.

The President, of course, has his reasons, or excuses, for practicing self-deterrence. He says he wants to avoid a wider war, “escalation” and “World War III.” But whatever the reason or excuse, the bottom line is still the same: The West has given Ukraine enough to survive, but not enough to win.

For the most part, Biden’s center-left supporters have implored him to speed up the delivery of weapon systems to Ukraine while they refrain from criticizing him directly. Instead, they aim their rhetorical fire at Congressional Republicans for not supporting Biden’s most recent Ukrainian aid request.

As David Frum argues, “A ‘yes’ on both Ukraine and the border is still within reach, if only pro-Ukraine Republicans will press their colleagues to grasp it.”

Congressional Republican Politics. There is some truth to Frum’s argument. Some Congressional Republicans are, indeed, opposed to aiding Ukraine, while other GOPers are playing politics and trying to use Ukraine aid to score political points against Biden.

But the more important and consequential issue which Frum and other center-left Biden supporters ignore, is that most Congressional Republicans are fed up with Biden’s weak, timid and half-hearted approach to aiding Ukraine.

Congressional Republicans don’t want another “forever war”; they want a clear and decisive Ukrainian win. Yet Biden has never laid out a strategy for ensuring that Ukraine wins and Russia loses. Instead, he repeats his vague mantra about “standing by Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

But this begs the question: as long as it takes to achieve what, exactly? Win? Lose? Tie? Negotiate? Biden never says.

Biden’s Timidity. Occasionally, the president will tip his hand. During a June 13, 2023, Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Biden said explicitly that aid to Ukraine is designed to achieve not a military victory for Ukraine, but a negotiated settlement instead.

“It’s still early days,” he told reporters, “but what we do know is that the more land that Ukrainians are able to liberate, the stronger hand they will have at the negotiating table.”

In other words, Biden isn’t playing for a Ukrainian win; he’s playing for a tie and a negotiated settlement that will force Ukraine to cede large amounts of its territory and millions of its people to the tender mercies of Putin’s Russia.

As O’Brien frankly acknowledges, “The Biden administration doesn’t want Ukraine to win.”

Most Congressional Republicans, however, do want Ukraine to win, and this explains their frustration with Biden and their reluctance to support additional aid request for Ukraine.

“Absolutely, we have to stop Putin,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Florida) told Fox News’ Mark Levin Dec. 11, 2023. But “it’s our job to say ‘to what end?’ What’s the strategy? How are you going to get there?’—and also to question what he [Biden] has done so far.”

“We are in a stalemate that will be very long and very expensive,” Waltz adds.

“I’d say from the very beginning, they’ve [the Biden administration] been engaging in half-measures while Ukraine has been half-succeeding,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) Feb. 16, 2023.

“That has been a pattern with this administration from the beginning,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) Feb. 26, 2023.

They have slow-rolled critical military weapon systems… [and] it’s a long list. It’s Patriots, it’s HIMARS; it’s tanks; and now it’s F-16’s. And to me, that is a real blunder.

We need to get them what they need now and listen to the Ukrainians… They’ve proven their ability to fight bravely, and I think we need to do a much better job.

It took nine months to get them the Patriots…

In short, Biden says he supports Ukraine but fails to follow through with specific policies that would make that rhetorical support real and tangible. Most Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, support Ukraine but have grown weary of a president who refuses to commit to victory.

As Frum rightly notes, “If leadership was ever needed, it’s needed now.” But that leadership has to come from the President, the Commander in Chief. It cannot come from Congress.

Featured photo credit: President Joe Biden (L) and Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) (R), courtesy of the Washington Free Beacon (Getty Images). Biden and Cotton represent polar opposite approaches to Ukraine. Biden, the Democrat, wants a tie and a negotiated settlement. Cotton, the Republican, wants a Ukrainian win and a Russia defeat.

Israel Should Ignore Recent American Military Counsel Re: Gaza and Hamas

Israel Should Ignore Recent American Military Counsel Re: Gaza and Hamas

By John R Guardiano on November 11, 2023

U.S. military leaders are projecting their experience in Iraq and Afghanistan onto Israel in Gaza. But these are dissimilar conflicts with fundamentally different objectives.

What can Israel learn from the recent American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Much less than U.S. military leaders seem to think.

For example, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., told reporters recently that the complete destruction of Hamas is “a pretty large order.”

According to The Times of Israel, Brown said he worries that too many civilian Palestinian deaths might radicalize the Palestinian population and thereby create more terrorists.

“That’s something we have to pay attention to,” he said.

That’s why when we talk about time—the faster you can get to a point where you stop the hostilities, you have less strife for the civilian population that turns into someone who now wants to be the next member of Hamas.

This counsel of caution is bad and inapt military advice. The General is mistakenly projecting the recent American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan onto Israel in Gaza today. But this truly is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military was waging a counterinsurgency campaign designed to legitimize, in the eyes of the populace, new and indigenous national and regional governments.

For this reason, creating more terrorists through excessive civilian deaths and excessive collateral damage was a legitimate concern.

Israel, however, is not waging a counterinsurgency campaign; it is waging a war to destroy Hamas. And the Palestinian population in Gaza already is radicalized.

“Children are marinated from birth in Jew hatred,” notes Andrew McCarthy. “Hamas,” he writes, “was elected by Palestinians because it wants to destroy Israel and murder” Jews.

Moreover, as recent videos from Gaza show, although the Palestinians in Gaza are radicalized and filled with genocidal hatred of the Jews, many Palestinians nonetheless seem to understand that Hamas is corrupt and living high off the hog while they suffer from Hamas-induced war and material deprivation.

Military Objective. This doesn’t mean that Israel should simply destroy Gaza. That would be wrong and immoral, and it would breed righteous diplomatic isolation of the Jewish State. Too many civilians would needlessly die as a result.

Simply destroying Gaza, of course, is not what Israel is doing. Instead, Israel is destroying Hamas, while going to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties and collateral damage.

Gen. Brown to the contrary notwithstanding, destroying Hamas is a fully achievable military objective. Israel can destroy Hamas as a military force. It can destroy Hamas’ military infrastructure, capability, and wherewithal.

Hamas, obviously, may continue to exist as a political and ideological movement. That is much harder to extinguish. Destroying Hamas, politically and ideologically, is well beyond the purview and capability of the Israeli Defense Forces. But destroying Hamas as a military force is hardily a fanciful or farfetched objective.

As for who rules Gaza after Hamas, that really is not Israel’s concern. Unlike the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel is not trying to establish a civilian government in Gaza: it simply is trying to eliminate a military threat there.

The post-Hamas civilian government will be established and administered by someone else, some other regional or international body—the Palestinian Authority, perhaps; maybe the Arab League; possibly the United Nations.

Israel, meanwhile, will be at the ready, fully prepared to eliminate any nascent military capability or threat that might again emerge in Gaza in the future.

‘Mowing the Lawn’. This is different from Israel’s previous approach to Gaza, which was to permit or allow establishment of a Hamas military base there while periodically brushing it back through military strikes. This was known as “mowing the lawn.”

Israel no longer will “mow the lawn.” Israel now will stop the lawn from ever being planted, even as many Palestinians in Gaza remain eager to grow new grass.

General Colin Powell famously said, “You break it; you own it.” That may have been true of Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is not true of Gaza. Gaza was badly broken before Israel invaded.

In fact, Israel invaded Gaza to fix it. Fixing Gaza, as far as Israel is concerned, means eliminating its military infrastructure, capability, and wherewithal, nothing more and nothing less.

The bottom line: Israel knows what it is doing, and what it is doing bears little resemblance to what the United States set out to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Israelis seem to understand this. The United States should, too.

Feature photo credit: the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., courtesy of Task & Purpose (Eric Dietrich/U.S. Air Force).